I find it difficult to celebrate anyone's election - but I do not find it nearly so tough to celebrate most of the Republican Party's defeat. They've been captured by Christian Right, and that fact alone makes this heathen very nervous. In fact, it makes me positively nauseous to hear them mouth slogans about "small government" and "liberty" while trying to crush gay rights and a woman's right to choose. Watching them squirm now because those contradictions cost them big is rather amusing. And I'm afraid the article's right - they probably will double down on the stupid, and end up going the way of the dodo.

After the historic GOP congressional wave in 2010, many Republicans were sure Obama was destined for defeat in 2012. An incumbent who had presided over four years of high unemployment — and whose overwhelming unpopularity was discussed as an immutable fact on Fox News and talk radio — seemed ripe for the picking. His re-election has some party leaders worried that the GOP is out of step with demographic and ideological trends, preaching to a shrinking choir. They do not want to be what Congressman turned TV host Joe Scarborough has despairingly called “the stupid party,” with retro in-the-bubble ideas about rape, contraception and “self-deportation” that alienate a modern multicultural electorate.

But the consolation that my library will dissolve into its constituent parts in the great world of second-hand books is not as great as it was even a few years ago. Second-hand booksellers are closing their shops and transferring their businesses online because 90 percent of their sales come from the Internet and 90 percent of their overheads come from their shops. It is a very simple business decision.